Why should you manual tune your TV?

March 13, 2019

by

Tom Smart

Why should you manually tune your TV?

I am writing this blog fresh from a one hour drive to an
appointment is Tunbridge Wells, which for those who know me and follow Smart
Aerials we are based in Eastbourne. I had installed a new TV aerial and
connected cables that feed various TV points around the house. At the time
there was building works going on so there was no TV’s to connect and I did the
once around testing each point. I was happy all was working OK!

I get a call from the electrician who says that he’s
connected the TV, tuned it in and it’s breaking up on the all BBC channels
(alarm bells are ringing) and some of the ITV and Channel 4 channels. This
client is a valued regular customer so I agreed to go back, didn’t bother going
over what was covered in the guarantee as I prefer just to keep clients happy
when we can.

I arrive, test the signals which are fine, plug it into the
TV and yes the BBC’s are breaking up – Don’t worry I am getting to the point!
As this particular model was a Samsung I knew that you can go into the manual
tune setting to check what frequencies have been stored. Voila – After checking
some of the frequencies stored had been stored to the Tunbridge Wells and the
rest had been stored to the Crystal Palace transmitter. The aerial I had
installed actually believe it or not had been aligned to the Crystal Palace
transmitter. This was because where I had installed the aerial where the
customer requested in the loft (not my recommendation) the Crystal Palace
transmitter worked much better than the nearby Tunbridge Wells transmitter.
Aerial signals can be funny like that. But this didn’t stop the TV storing it.

Auto tuning TV signals can store some wrong channels.

It is worth noting that when you install a TV aerial and
point it in a direction, although you will focus the gain so that it maximises
signal pick up in that direction, it will still pick up signals to the sides
and even behind of the way the aerial is pointing. When this signal which could
be classed as interference as it’s an unwanted signal is above a certain
strength the TV could think that this is a group of channels that it thinks
that it should try to store, even if it doesn’t work properly.

This is even more common when you are in an area which lots
of nearby transmitters or when aiming your aerial to an out of area transmitter
which you may be doing because your local transmitter only broadcasts Freeview
Lite (more information of Freeview Lite can be found here). It is also very
common when you have amplification going on in your TV system as this will
amplify the unwanted signal too, make it stronger and more likely for the TV to
want to store it.

For instance, where we are in Eastbourne, if you point your
TV aerial to the Heathfield transmitter you will likely still pick up signals
from the Hastings transmitter and the Southcliff Tower transmitter which is in
Eastbourne itself, the signal will be weaker than the Heathfield signal but may
still be strong enough for the TV to store. Or if installing an aerial in Seaford,
Newhaven, Peacehaven you would want to align your transmitter in Whitehawk in
Brighton instead of the Newhaven transmitter so you can get more stations. This
is the same for when installing aerials in Lewes, Bexhill, Hastings and all
over the country in fact.

How to manually tune your TV

First things first to do this you will need to identify
which way your aerial is pointing. It’s best to go on the UK free TV site to
check what transmitters are local to you and then physically look at the aerial
to see which way it is angled. Pay attention to whether the aerial has been
installed on a horizontal or vertical polarisation as this will help rule out
transmitters in your area if you are unsure. You use the online postcode
checker which will suggest your optimum transmitter but this by no means should
be relied upon as there is a whole load of reasons why you might not be using
these transmitters.

I would then recommend going to your TV and checking the
manual tuning settings and that your TV does in fact have a manual tuning
setting, some don’t! We need to make note on how we enter this. Most TV’s
accept a channel number which makes this super easy. Or whether we have to
enter this as a frequency. You should also take this opportunity to delete
anything you have stored on the TV. This is different depending on the TV, you
may be able to just delete these, you may need to unplug the aerial and run an
auto-scan so it literally stores nothing or you may need to perform a factory
reset.

Back on the UK free TV site. You will then need to go on and
select the transmitter that your aerial is aligned to. You will then need to
make note of the channel numbers or the frequencies that this transmitter
broadcasts on. Please note that the channel number is a UHF channel number
associated to a small frequency band. This is NOT a TV channel number -there
usually is a small amount of confusion around this.

Now you need to enter the channel numbers or frequencies
into your manual tuning settings on your TV. If it’s a channel number it will
be 3, 6, 7 or 8 numbers depending on your transmitter ranging between 21-60. If
it is an frequency usually this would be given in Mhz but sometimes some TV’s
only accept this in KHz. Usually UHF channel 38 as an example if you was to
store this as Mhz this would be 606Mhz or 606000 Khz. You would then need to
repeat this process for the remaining groups of channels.

And that’s it.

If your TV doesn’t have manual tune setting you may want to
run an auto tune and connect and un connect the aerial input to the TV
depending on where about the scan is progressing and what frequencies you wish
to scan. This can be tricky however so I wouldn’t guarantee this as an easy
solution.

Alternatively, you could install filters to remove the
unwanted signals on your aerial system so you can confidently run an auto-scan
with the unwanted signals removed. But I will save that for another blog. 😊

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